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Single atom is also the perfect transistor (page 2)

A team of Australian and American researchers announced on Sunday that they had created a working transistor from a single phosphorus atom embedded precisely in a silicon crystal. The transistor was completed by physicists at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), the University of Melbourne, and Purdue University, and according to a UNSW press release, this "remarkable feat of micro-engineering? uses as its active component an individual phosphorus atom patterned between atomic-scale electrodes and electrostatic control gates." John Markoff of the New York Times reported in a February 19 article that the team believes they have laid the groundwork for what Markoff describes as a "futuristic quantum computer that might one day function in a nanoscale world and would be orders of magnitude smaller and quicker than today?s silicon-based machines." The reason, according to the Times reporter, is that traditional computers need to use transistors that have just two states, such as "on" and "off" or "0" and "1"

In a remarkable feat of micro-engineering, UNSW physicists have created a working transistor consisting of a single atom placed precisely in a silicon crystal. The tiny electronic device, described ...